Students from around the world calculated their class mean and standard deviations for their footprints and posted them on our world map.
Do you see differences across the globe? If so, why do you think those differences exist?
Did you use the calculator to try to reduce your footprint down to the average from a citizen of another country? What changes would you have to make to lower your footprint in this way? Are you going to try and take some of these actions in your daily life?
Student Footprints >
Hallie (Mooresville, NC, USA) 17
My name is Hallie, I am 17 years old, and I am a junior at Mooresville High School in Mooresville, North Carolina. Below are my carbon footprint results.
Transportation: 19,574 kgs
Home: 6,339 kgs
Food: 1,821 kgs
Purchases: 461 kgs
Total Footprint: 28,195 kgs
My total footprint is above average. The majority of my carbon footprint comes from my transportation results. I was shocked when I saw my carbon footprint results, especially for transportation. I didn't realize that taking four flights in the past year would be so harmful to the environment. My food results were below average, which was also surprising. I think this is because my family eats mostly organic food. Overall, my results from this project were not what I expected. In the future, I am definitely going to try to cut back on traveling and try to carpool more often to lower my transportation footprint. I think doing this will lower my total carbon footprint drastically.
I think it's pretty awesome how your family eats quite a bit of organic food. Your footprint was relatively low compared to mine. You have some really good ideas about how to cut back on your footprint.
My total footprint was above average too, which surprised me. We both had high transportation totals, so we could try and carpool more than we already do.
Carpooling is a great way to start lowering the footprint on your transportation. Going on less trips could also help if you vacation a ton!
I agree that cutting back on your transportation will lower your total footprint very much. I also agree with "mae418" that eating a lot of organic foods is really great!